Truck dried tomatoes/finished product

nickel plate · Sep 23, 2011

Exactly two days of drying in the truck cab (white painted F-250) with one 20 mile each way trip into town (on the club cab seat) to the hardware store. I did two flats for the demo but usually dry four flats at a time. Once the fruit dries a bit and newspapers aren't necessary for dripage, I move the flats off of the seats and up onto the dash. The shrinkage is phenomonal-less than half the original size. When the moisture is eliminated and leaves the sugars-taste one! Sweet candy!

creekbend · Sep 23, 2011

Good idea. Are those roma tomatoes?:tractor:

AchingBack · Sep 23, 2011

Any vehicle is also useful for starting seeds. Some people grow herbs in broken down vehicles.

jocww · Sep 23, 2011

Could you just put the tomatoes in a tray and put them inside a clear plastic garbage bag with some newspaper on the bottom to soak up the water?

nickel plate · Sep 24, 2011

jocww said:
Could you just put the tomatoes in a tray and put them inside a clear plastic garbage bag with some newspaper on the bottom to soak up the water?

I think that would create a mold problem. You need the heat inside the cab and a large enough volume of air to dissipate the tomatoe's water vapor, even to opening the doors to air out the cab once or twice a day.

nickel plate · Sep 24, 2011

creekbend said:
Good idea. Are those roma tomatoes?:tractor:

I wanted romas, the tag said roma, I bought and paid for what was represented as romas but turned out to be some variety of a large cherry, about 1-1/8" to 1-1/2" in diameter. Not a total loss as they are surprisingly very sweet, almost tomato paste flavored. The larger red and green tomatoes are an heirloom variety however I don't remember which-the ID stick is buried way in the jungle so I won't know what they are until tearout.

This morning I put four more flats in the truck.